Nokia To Rebrand Ovi To Nokia Services

Nokia has announced via a blog post on their Conversations blog, that they will be killing the Ovi brand. All the Ovi related services will be renamed to ‘Nokia Services’.

The Finnish giant will start transitioning to Nokia Services beginning from July this year. Nokia expects the transition to complete by the end of 2012.

The reason cited behind Nokia killing the Ovi brand is the popularity of Nokia as a brand name, and aiming to tightly integrate their various services with their handsets.

Here is Nokia’s official statement on re branding Ovi to Nokia services -:

The reasons for this decision includes the fact that Nokia is a well-known and highly-loved brand the world over. Our mobile experiences are tightly integrated with our devices there is no longer a differentiation. For example, if consumers want the best mobile navigation experience, they know it’s a Nokia that they can rely on. These last few years, and moving forward, our mission remains unchanged: we will continue our work to deliver compelling, unified mobile service offerings and next-generation, disruptive technologies.

Nokia also states that they are only changing the name of their services, and the existence of these services will not be affected by it. In all probability, Nokia has taken this step due to its partnership with Microsoft, and its upcoming WP8 based phones.

Right now, looking at how things are going, I doubt the existence of the Finnish giant – Nokia – itself!